The Not So Standard Book of Spells
by This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
Summary: In desperation, Harry tries to cast a spell from Final Fantasy (he played one of the games on Dudley's old SNES) and, to his surprise, it works. Written for the Daily Weird Prompt Thing [Speed-writing Competition].


**Disclaimer** : The ideas are mine, the characters belong to JK...

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"I think this is it" Hermione said, as they approached a small concentration of mustard-like plants growing around an old oak tree.

"You mean you dont even know - -" Ron started to complain but he got quiet when Harry poked him in the ribs.

The three of them had been walking in the forest, looking for a plant that was one of the ingredients of the polyjuice potion. They'd been at it for quite a while now, and Ron was growing impatient.

Hermione, however, wasn't listening to him anymore. She kneeled down and openned her copy of _A Thousand magical herbs and fungi_ on the floor. Hemlock; Hazel; Gurdyroot; Foxglove; Ah, there it was: fluxweed.

"We're in the right place, this is definitely fluxweed," she said, leaving the book where it was and standing up slowly, getting closer to the plants. She examined one of them for a minute before plucking it out of the ground. Then she smelled the plant and turned to face Harry and Ron again.

"Hermione - -" Harry started, but the girl interrupted him, indicating the plants:

"This is it. We need sixteen scruples for the potion."

The boys, however, were no longer listening. Instead, their eyes were on the small tree-like creature standing by Hermione's feet. It had jumped from the tree while the girl was busy, and now it grabed the fluxweed plant from her hand and started hitting the girl with it.

"Ouch! No! No!"

"What is that?" Ron asked while Harry tried to kick the thing away from Hermione.

"Locomotor Mortis!" Hermione shouted, pointing her wand at the tiny creature, causing it to lose balance and fall face first on the ground.

"That's a bowtruckle,"Hermione explained. "We have to be fast, where there's one bowtruckle, there's usually - -"

"More?" Harry asked as ten or twelve bowtrucles jumped from the oak tree and started atacking the kids.

"Ahhhhh!" Ron yelled, as one of the bowtruckles sank its twig-like fingers on his skin to climb up his leg. "Can't we just run away?" He asked exasperately, pulling that bowtrucle away from him and throwing it on the ground, just as another one jumped on his back.

"Immobilus! Immobilus!" Hermione shot and missed, again and again, because the small creatures were moving too fast for her to aim. She yelled as one of the bowtruckles bit her ankle. "Ouch! We have to collect it during the full moon, or the potion won't work." Hermione explained

"We can't wait another month!" Harry protested,reaching out to grab a bowtruckle on air, before it could jump on Hermione's face, his reflexes sharp from Quiditch practice. "Draco could petrify the entire school by then."

"I thought you said this was an _easy_ thing to get!" Ron retorted, enphasizing the word easy to provoque Hermione. One of the small tree dwellers climbed his cloack and took his wand out of his back pocket... When he tried to poke Ron with it, the wand backfired, and the bowtruckle was thrown several metres back. "HA, HA! Take, that!" Ron laughed, then he pulled one of the creatures from his sholders and spun it above his had, like he would do to a gnome. "Stupid, little tree trolls."

"Petrificus Totalus!" Harry shouted, and although one of the bowtruckles fell back, paralised, three more came rushing towards the boy. Harry kept his wand ready but mosto f the time it came down to kicking the little tree creatures away. He needed a spell that would catch several targets at the same time, something like—No, he couldn't think of anything.

"Ouch!" Hermione shouted angrily, forgot about her wand for a moment, grabed one of the bowtruckles on her arms and used it to knockdown a second creature ripping a page of the book she had forgotten on the ground. Then she closed the heavy volume while one of the bowtrucles had his leg inside it. "Not my book!"

"Here, Ron!" Hermione summoned Ron's wand with a spell that the boys did not recognize and threw it to the Weasley, but his reflexes weren't sharp enough and the wand hit him in the nose.

"Blimey, Hermione! That's my face!" Ron protested

Hermione yelled.

"Hermione, watch out!" Harry pushed her to the side, as several new bowtruckles joined the attack. His glasses fell on the ground and everything became blurred.

"I think they're going for my eyes!"

"Harry!"

"Aaaaahhh"

"They got my wand!"

"THUNDER!" Harry shouted, and a cloud of electric bolts hit all of the bowtruckles simoutaneously, lifting them in the air with a roaring thunder, effectively stopping the attack. It lasted for a few seconds, though it looked like a great deal more, and when it was done the bowtruckles fell down, imobile.

Everything was quiet for a while. Ron and Hermione stared at Harry.

Harry was flabbergasted. He finally lowered his wand, noticing, for the first time, the way his thumb pressed the handler. Almost as though it was puching a button. He didn't expect it to work, he didn't even think about it all that much.

"Harry?" Hermione asked in a low voice, "Where did you learn to do that?"

"Forget about where he learnt it!" Ron smiled looking from Harry to the bowtruckles and back to Harry again. "Teach me!"

"Harry?"

"Are they - - ?" Harry asked, looking at the bowtruckles and speaking for the first time.

"I think they're just stunned." Ron said, lifting the arm of one of the creatures and dropping it on the gound. "It looks like they're breathing."

Harry felt a great relief.

"Harry? Which spell was that?"

"It's not a spell."Harry answered, looking at the girl. "It's from Final Fantasy."

"The vídeo game?" Hermione asked, incredulously.

Harry nodded.

"What's a _visgogame_?" Ron asked seeming a bit puzzled.

"Video game." Hermione corrected, starring at Harry, baffled.

"It's a muggle game –" Harry started to explain, and he meant to say something more, but he couldn't think of a way to make Ron understand what a vídeo game was.

"Harry, you can't be serious."Hermione said, trying to ignore Ron as the red-haired repeated clumsy variations of _'visgogame'_ to himself, over and over again, trying to learn that new word. "Why would even use a spell from a game?"

"I don't know." Harry answered. "I guess I wasn't really thinking. It just... occured to me. My aunt and uncle gave Dudley a supernintendo, and I used to play it all the time when they left me home alone last summer. Before the whole thing with Dobby, I mean. I guess I just remembered it..."

"Super-what?" Ron asked.

"We told you, Ron, it's a game." Hermione said. "And it shouldn't work! Although it's possible that the people who designed the game are wizards, but why would they work with – Still, it's not likely that it is a coincidence. I mean, the odds- -"

" _Supervisgolame_ " Ron mumbled.

Harry shrugged, and Hermione smiled:

"Maybe I should ask my parentes for a video game this christmas." She said. Harry smiled. She looked at the bowtruckles. "They look like little versions of those ent things from 'The Lord of the Rings' don't they?"

Harry shrugged. He had never read those books, though he'd seen a copy in Dudley's neglected bookself.

"Lord of What?"cRon asked.

"It's a book Ron!" Hermioned said, exasperated. "A very well known book, written by a muggle writer. Don't you know anything about muggles?"

"No! Why should I? Harry just did a really cool thing, now will you two pick up your wands and remember you are wizards please?" Ron said, almost shouting. The youngest of the Weasley boys had had enough muggle references for several weeks. He picked up Harry's glasses from the bushes and gave them to his best friend. "Can we get the fluxwhatever plant we came here for and leave the _forbidden_ forest, please? Here," he grabbed a bunch of fluxweeds from the ground and showed it to Hermione. "Is this enough?"

"Just a little bit more."Hermione smiled softly.

Harry placed his glasses on the bridge of his nose and noticed they were broken again.

"Hermione," he asked, "do you mind?"

Hermione placed the fluxweed inside her book and looked at Harry.

"You can make that kind of thunder using a spell from a video game, but you can't fix a pair of broken glasses?" She asked simply

Harry shrugged.

"No one uses glasses on final fantasy." He answered simply.

"Oculo reparo" Hermione said, pointing her want straight at Harry's face and when the glasses were mended, the three of them walked back to the castle.

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 _ **A/N:**_ _I wrote this for the Daily Weird Prompt Thing [Speed-writing Competition], my prompt was: "in desperation, Harry tries to cast a spell from Final Fantasy (he played one of the games on Dudley's old SNES after Dudley got an N64) and, to his surprise, it works". This is my first fanfic in a long long time, and the idea of a speed-writing competition, not to mention the prompt, was simply too good to pass._


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